


Won't Let Go

by TheSightlessSniper



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bisexual Dean Winchester, Dean having a sexuality crisis, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Romance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Openly Bisexual Sam Winchester, POV Multiple, Pansexual Panromantic Castiel, Some vampires get ganked, boys having feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-01-31 21:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSightlessSniper/pseuds/TheSightlessSniper
Summary: Castiel has feelings. Dean has a sexuality crisis.(Because there aren't enough fics with this premise already...*sarcasm*)(Jokes - we all know we love a good sexuality crisis fic...)





	1. Blue Balls

**Author's Note:**

> Second Supernatural fic. And what do I pick to write? Destiel. A ship I was discouraged from shipping, and only realised recently 'Huh, I actually kind of like a whole BUNCH of Supernatural ships, including this one...'! So I...wrote a Destiel fic.
> 
> So here it is - Dean having a bi crisis! Hope you enjoy!
> 
> (Title of the fic comes from the same song by Black Stone Cherry).

As an Angel of the Lord, Castiel was inherently adaptable to whatever the world would throw at him.

Cas had inhabited a lot of vessels, but Jimmy Novak’s body had always been a favourite for multiple reasons. Jimmy was mostly inconspicuous, known already as a good man. He had been a good father to his daughter, a good husband to his wife. The man didn’t have a bad bone in his entire body, and every day, Castiel carried the guilt of taking Jimmy away from his family. At other times, he had been in several different bodies; women, men, Jimmy’s daughter, and on one occasion, the body of a young child struggling with the idea of putting on the dress his mother wanted him to wear on a body that didn’t fit his soul. But he always came back to Jimmy Novak. It was where he felt most comfortable, like he was home.

He’d had to learn much about the world when he’d landed, but some knowledge he had brought with him directly from Heaven itself; God didn’t hold Heaven from a non-believer if they had still been a good person, or a person who had repented for the hurt or the damage they had caused and the bad things they had done, and God did not, as some misguided misinformed groups had a penchant for professing, hate people who were not heterosexual or of the gender they were born as. God had passed on that particular piece of information in the cosmic genetic makeup of all of his children; no gender, nor those lacking a gender, or sexual or romantic orientation were deserving of condemnation for who they were.

It was this complete disregard for society’s archaic (and thankfully strongly battled) restrictions that meant that Castiel was entirely comfortable with falling in love with absolutely anyone. And from all of the eligible and consenting people he could have set his eyes on, Castiel fell for Dean Winchester.

 

‘Did you use my laptop last night?’

As Sam rounded the table in the bunker kitchen, Dean followed his movement. He shrugged. ‘Maybe I did. Mine was charging.’

‘Well, if you’re going to use it, could it be for purely, you know, cases?’ Sam sat opposite him, cracking open a beer for each of them and grimacing. ‘I did not need to see your dirty anime movies.’

‘It was art.’

‘It was tentacles, Dean. Tentacles.’

‘And what was in the paintings by that Japanese artist dude?’

‘Hokusai? Pretty sure it was a little more tasteful than what I saw.’

‘Whatever. I’ll wipe your history next time.’ Dean rolled his eyes, gulping his beer. In all fairness, he’d thought he’d hit the right button. But maybe he’d just passed out instead. Anyway, really, his brother should expect him to be looking at porn on the regular; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten laid, and with most of their time either spent saving the world—or fucking it up even more than it already was—he hardly had the most promising dating prospects. Even if he did flirt and successfully get a consenting woman out of a bar and into the Impala, in his experience, women didn’t much go in for doing it in a crappy motel room with his brother in the next bed. The ones who he did grow to connect with seemed to either disappear, or die horrifically, or maybe they just forgot he existed. The glamorous life of a hunter; single, mostly alone, and doomed to die young. In his and Sam’s case, multiple times too.

He drank the rest of the bottle, nudging Sam’s knee under the table. ‘Cases?’

‘Nothing much. A few ghost sightings, but it’s also by the same guy who says he knows how to get into Area 51 and that they’re hiding goat-men in there, so…we’re off the clock for once.’ Sam put down his phone, sat back against the wall and sighed. ‘We have nothing urgent to do for once.’

He blinked. ‘That’s really weird, man. But hey, if we have the day off, we could watch a movie, or head to a bar and pick up some chicks…’

Sam rolled his eyes. ‘Just how often does that work for you?’

‘Hey, you wanted me to stop using your laptop. Help me find a replacement for my hand.’

That was how they ended up driving two hours out from the bunker to some fancy bar which they were both completely underdressed for, and while Sam flirted with the girl showing off her mixology skills behind the bar, Dean tried (and spectacularly failed) to try his luck with a woman who turned out to be there waiting for her girlfriend to arrive.

Sam ended up going home with the mixologist, and Dean crashed in the back seat of the Impala, nursing a bruised ego and even bluer balls than he’d left the bunker with.


	2. The Angel In The Joke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because the first chapter is so short...here's a second one already. <3

Considering the age of the car, it wasn’t hard to know that if he saw a 1967 Chevrolet Impala, it was mostly safe to assume that one Winchester or another would be sat behind the wheel.

He wasn’t behind the wheel, but when Castiel approached the passenger side door, Dean’s sleeping form was clearly visible, the light of the bar’s fluorescent signs bouncing off the fabric folds of his shirt and the soft sheen of his face. Despite not being as tall as Sam, he was still far too tall for the back of the car, hunched and curled up like a cat on the fluted leather seats.

It had take a long time to realise that the faster beating of his vessel’s heart was connected to those he looked at. When he had talked with the demon Meg, she had brought a fluttering in the pit of his vessel’s stomach, a heavy pounding in his veins as his blood rushed like a tidal wave through every vein and artery. After she’d been killed, he had mourned her death in private, and only occasionally allowed her to cross his mind since. Every time she did, he was reminded of the few kisses they’d shared, the interaction he had only later noted as flirtation. He’d always been able to see her real face, the contorted and disturbing one behind the vessel’s pretty rounded visage, but for all the evil demons could be and that they could do, Meg had been a playful but ultimately wonderful and rare exception who had ultimately made his life better.

When he first remembered feeling that way with Dean, he couldn’t remember. Maybe it had never happened in quite the same way, but he recognised it now; the same rush of blood, the same butterflies in the stomach he never had to fill. Now he knew, Dean wormed his way into his thoughts day and night, plaguing his lack of need to sleep twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, through every case and every interaction.

His hand hovered over the handle of the passenger door. Dean looked so peaceful that disturbing his dreams seemed sacrilegious. Castiel had seen the dark circles, the premature age that had begun to tug at his skin before his time long ago. Whether Dean acknowledged it or not, he was no longer as young as he liked to pretend that he was, no longer as energetic as his former self, and it seemed he needed every iota of sleep that the hunter life allowed for. How fragile humans were.

Cas opened the door, swinging inside and letting the door shut of its own accord. Almost immediately, Dean jolted awake, sitting up in one fell swoop and pointing the barrel of a gun squarely between where his eyebrows parted company. ‘…Cas?’

‘Hello Dean.’

The man sighed, palming his eyes with his free hand. ‘Son of a bitch. Couldn’t wait until morning?’

‘It’s two-fifty-seven. If we’re going by this timezone, it is morning.’

‘I meant late morning. Acceptable morning. Morning where I can get a coffee and deal with whatever crap you want to talk about over a pig-in-a-poke. Or pie.’ His head tipped back. ‘Whatever. You wanna find a diner?’

As Dean headed to a twenty-four-hour diner a few miles away, warbling along to some eighties rock song blasting out of the tape deck’s speakers, Castiel contemplated exactly what it was he’d wanted to talk to Dean about in the first place. He hadn’t had no reason to disturb him; he had information about a potential case—the goat-men did seem somewhat unusual, although not entirely out of the question—but part of it, if he was entirely honest, had just been that he hadn’t seen either brother in a few weeks due to cases in opposite directions. He missed them both, especially Dean.

When they were sat down in one of the booths and the tired insomniac waitress—which Dean was already eyeing up—had brought them each a cup of coffee and a menu, Dean was apparently in a slightly more amicable mood than he had been seconds after his rude awakening. One corner of his mouth quirked up. ‘So, any case? Or you just miss my pretty face?’

‘Both. There was an article in a local newspaper—‘

‘Goat-men in area 51? Yeah, we don’t think that’s a case.’ He dropped sugar into his coffee, poured in a touch of milk. ‘If you wanted to hang out, you could have just said. You could have joined us at the bar tonight, although it was a total bust. Long story short, I spent half an hour talking to, hitting on, and subsequently being shot down by a lesbian.’

‘Things are different with angels. We don’t see gender.’

‘Huh, think you could put in a good word for me then?’ Dean sipped, grinning.

Cas gazed into the black depths of his own cup, swilling the hot liquid around in the chipped mug. Humans were complicated, with their categorisation and division by sex, gender, sexuality, skin colour, place of origin. When he had taken control of Jimmy Novak, it had taken a while to understand the exact privilege it gave him; white male, charitable, and God-loving, but not in the corrupt, twisted ways that some justified their hatred of others with. When Anna had still been alive, he’d felt distinctly uncomfortable as she had described the treatment she endured day to day; cat-calling, unwanted physical attention, one instance of a man cornering her in an elevator and telling her of the things he would like to do to her until someone else had boarded. In other vessels, he had learned what it had felt like, to fear attack from something other than a supernatural threat, and had been very grateful when he’d been able to regain his favoured vessel once more.

His frown deepened. Anna had experienced closeness with Dean. She had slept with him on the back seat of that vintage vehicle, shared intimacy he could only hope to be privy to in this vessel, or maybe any vessel.

‘Have you considered widening your range of sexual partners to include people of other genders?’

Warm coffee sprayed across his face. Dean choked, coughing and spluttering up the mouthful that he had been in the middle of swallowing, ignoring the stares from the other wee-hour diner patrons. When he’d finally stopped, he sucked in a shaky breath, blinking back at him through watery eyes. ‘Wha—what?’

‘Statistically, you would be more likely to find a suitable partner for sexual congress if you are willing to consider any willing person of a legally-consenting age and mental state, regardless of gender.’

Dean looked at him as if he’d grown a second head. ‘What are you saying, Cas? I should try hitting up the local gay bar? Sandwich myself between a stripper and her boyfriend? Ask Lucifer or Crowley if they’re down for a good time? I think my days of experimentation are very much over, and even if they weren’t, I’m straight. Like an arrow. Like the surface of this table as soon as you’ve put a folded credit card under the wonky leg. I’m just not into dudes.’ Silence. Then… ‘What made you ask?’

‘Never mind.’

Dean eyed him like a hawk. ‘Cas.’

‘It’s not important.’

‘Here’s your pancakes, gentleman,’ the waitress interrupted, her sluggish drawl breaking through the awkwardness. Cas nodded in thanks, leaning to pick up the syrup from the table caddy, but Dean grabbed it, holding it out of reach.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re not telling me something. Come on, you can tell me.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Cas, you told us we’re your family. And family tries to help. Come on, tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I think that I might be the angel in the joke.’

‘…What joke?’

‘The joke about falling from Heaven for you.’

Dean shook his head, blinking. ‘Are you talking about the pick-up line? Because I think you kind of mixed up two of them. What does that have to do with this?’

‘I think I’ve developed romantic feelings for you.’


	3. Accidental Clicks & Stanford Experimentation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that I am still kind of working on this even though technically it's finished - there's a lot of editing to do!
> 
> I also don't have a consistent upload schedule at all, so if you're enjoying this, and I don't post in a while, it's because I've either A) been caught up with work/life and haven't had the time to edit, or B) I'm a lazy-ass who has been playing her Switch and ignoring her laptop.
> 
> Enjoy!

It was a solid ten minutes before he felt like his vocal cords would even work.

Dean ate a few mouthfuls of pancake with cream and fruit, but he was mostly eating simply because there was food in front of him now. His gaze swapped from Cas staring out of the window into the darkness outside, and back to the stack of pancakes so many times he was shocked he didn’t keel over from dizziness. It wasn’t as if he’d never dealt with romantic attention from men before; high school had brought a few closeted boys staring at him in the shower after gym class, and cases had taken them to people who needed help who had tried to put the moves on him more than once. There’d been once incident where he’d been mildly insulted that someone _hadn’t_ been hitting on him, but that had been just ego talking and he knew it. He wasn’t homophobic. He just…didn’t know how to act around a man who was hitting on him.

Right?

Cas hadn’t technically been hitting on him, but the same feeling had struck a bum note, like something had been irrevocably changed for the worse. He tried to speak a few times, but nothing came out. What could he even really say?

Cas turned to him, pancakes barely touched. ‘Dean, I’m sorry. I’ve made this awkward.’

‘No, no, it’s fine. Just…maybe if things had been different? Like if I was gay, or bi or something, or you were a girl, maybe it would work. But—‘

‘I understand.’ Cas’ response wasn’t aggressive, but those two words seemed to signal the end of the discussion with no room for further explanation. He wasn’t sure he could really say anything else anyway, but the tenseness of his shoulders told him that there was nothing else to be added.

Dean finished his pancakes in silence, paid the bill, and by the time he’d put on his jacket to leave, Cas had disappeared into the night without another word.

He didn’t wait for Sam—as much as he joked about it, Sammy was a big boy, and he’d find his way home post-booty-call like he did every time. Dean slung himself in the Impala and turned the volume dial up, drowning out the pounding in his ears with his dad’s old music and driving off into the night down the familiar roads. When he reached the bunker and parked, the sun was already creeping over the horizon, and thanks to the caffeine load a few hours before, he was wide awake with no company except his own thoughts.

The bunker always felt empty. Even when Sam was across the table from him, flicking through a lore book, or mom was at the other end of the table chowing down on a greasy burger, or even when Crowley dropped by and graced—cursed—them with his presence, it always felt like there was something missing. It was such a large space for such a small number of people, especially when it had once been graced by the presence of many more Men of Letters in decades past.

Dean sank down onto one of the seats, shoving the books out of the way and grabbing Sam’s laptop and flipping it open. At first, he’d been intending to ‘distract’ himself; the internet was full of porn after all.

Instead, he simply skimmed through his browser history, noting the names of the videos he’d been watching recently. Most of them were generic filthy titles, derogatory terms for women that were only seemingly acceptable when used in the context of porn. Some were slightly more delicate, and some were click-bait. But it was when he reached one of the results, he froze, finger quivering, hovering over the trackpad. He’d clicked on it by accident—it hadn’t exactly been easy to click on something at the time, what with his dominant hand down his pants—but he’d watched the entire thing through to the end regardless; the video had involved a woman and two men, with one of the men and the woman taking turns pleasing the other man.

Dean shifted uncomfortably, shaking his head. He’d enjoyed the parts with the woman, and he’d tolerated the parts with the two guys. Even so, the memory of the video came back; of one of them licking the other’s length, riding atop him, hips rolling, sinking down. When the woman had become involved again near the end of the video, he’d quickly finished the job in hand—internal pun intended—and put it out of his mind, not even thinking of it when Sam had called him out over breakfast for the unceremonious (and unwelcome) use of his pilfered laptop for masturbatory material.

Hitting the ‘Clear History…’ option, he swallowed thickly and headed off to shower.

Sam got back to the bunker just after ten, less doing the Walk of Shame and more the Shuffle of the World’s Most Hungover Man. ‘We did a few shots together. Several. Liquor-store level of shots. I’m pretty sure all I’ll taste for the next year is tequila.’

Dean put a plate down in front of him, waving his hand over the bacon steam in the direction of Sam’s nose. ‘Don’t be Mr Healthy. You need carbs, meat, and grease.’

‘Thanks. How was your night?’

He stopped in placing the hot pan in the sink. ‘Uh…the woman I hit on was a lesbian.’

‘Fell asleep in the back of the car?’

‘I’m getting predictable.’ He watched Sam take a hesitant bite out of some of the food. ‘I spoke to Cas. He suggested the goat-man case.’

‘Huh, what did you do?’

‘Went to a diner, drank coffee, hence—‘ he waved towards the bags under his eyes. ‘And uh…’

‘And…what?’

‘I told him about the whole striking out with women, and he suggested I tried banging dudes instead.’

Sam raised his eyebrows, but it wasn’t in surprise. If anything, he looked at him expectantly. ‘…Well?’

‘Well what?’

‘Come on, dude. I’ve seen your internet history. The threesome videos with two dudes in them?’

‘That was an accidental click.’

‘I don’t know why you think it’s such a big deal, Dean. I’ve done it.’

The news nearly made him drop his drink. ‘What?!’

All he got for his shock was a shrug. Sam swallowed another bite of bacon, not meeting his eyes. ‘Stanford. First year. I had some mixed feelings about a guy in one of my classes, so I asked him out. We actually dated for a good few months.’

Dean sank down in the seat opposite Sam, staring. ‘Are you saying—‘

‘Yes, I’ve had sex with a man. In several different ways. Once in a library after hours.’ Sam’s fork stopped halfway between his plate and his mouth. ‘…Dean, if that—I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable, but…to be honest, it’s been pretty hard having to pretend to be completely straight in front of you.’

Dean swallowed, looking down at his mug. Memories popped up in quick succession, of childhood uses of offensive slurs and denied discomfort in his teen years when a few closeted boys had shown a vulnerable interest in him, and when he had thought a few platonic friends were getting just a little too close. Words used in the heat of a moment, ones he thought were acceptable at the time, suddenly made him feel nauseated. He sucked in a shaky breath, mouth opening and closing a few times before he finally spoke again. ‘Son of a bitch. I’m sorry, Sammy. I had…if you’d told me—‘

‘So because it’s me, you’d stop saying the offensive stuff because it’s suddenly wrong where it wasn’t?’

‘…’

‘Dean, if you accept me, then please just…also accept that there are things that you’re going to have to learn not to say, around me or anyone else. Like, please don’t call the coffee machine “gay” when it randomly stops working. It’s not a synonym for a piece of crap machinery, and it kind of stings.’

‘No, no yeah, I get it. I really am sorry. And I really don’t want for you to feel like, if there is a guy or whatever in the future that you want to introduce to me or…just…don’t feel like you can’t be you just because I’ve been a douchebag.’

He knew Sam probably wasn’t expecting him to round the table and give him a hug, but Dean felt like it was necessary. He released his shoulders, patting them once before sitting back down to his coffee, and Sam raised an eyebrow at him. ‘You know we’re brothers, right? I mean, I’m flattered but—’

‘Oh shut up, Sammy.’

‘Jerk.’

‘Bitch.’ He agitated the last dregs in his cup, trying to find a way to word the next part. ‘Uh, there is…something else. Cas.’

Sam frowned, gesturing with the fork to continue.

‘He told me he has romantic feelings for me.’

If he hadn’t have been watching, he might have missed Sam’s expression change minutely; the eyes widened a fraction, the fork stopping its gesturing in mid-air, and his mouth slowly opened, only to close again like a fish.

‘Yeah, that’s pretty much how I took it.’


	4. Bad Ideas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear this fic is finished...I just SUCK at uploading on time as of late because posting reminds me of how much I am not writing at the moment. I've hit a horrendous mental block, and simply THINKING about writing a fic (whether or not I have an idea) immediately fills me with anxiety. It's not fun to dread doing something that you love.

Solo hunts were something Cas was becoming increasingly used to.

The angel blade slammed into the demon’s side, breaking easily through the layers of fabric and skin. The vessel had already been dead, the internal haemorrhaging apparent in purple and black under the surface of the skin as the body flopped to the floor. Maybe an accident, or a fall. Either way, at least it hadn’t been someone who could have lived otherwise. Cas straightened up his trench coat, wiping some of his own blood off his lip with his sleeve with a sigh. Yet another trip to the laundromat. He really needed to invest in an extra set of clothing for after a hunt.

There were plenty of places he could have headed. There was a launderette ten blocks away, where the little old lady there would feed him green tea that was slightly overwhelming in its intensity and try to read his palm. There was the smaller laundromat in the local Koreatown, with the young woman who kept teaching him random bits of the language—not that he needed to understand as an angel—as he waited for his clothes to get clean. He ended up going to the nearest one; a dingy hole in the wall with a taped-up broken door, where half of the machines weren’t working and the ones that did were overdue a descaling. Nevertheless, he threw his clothes in with the cheap detergent, dropped the coins into the slot, and sat watching some soap opera over the shoulder of the man’s young daughter behind the counter.

The little girl turned her head, tilting it endearingly. ‘Your face is pretty, mister.’

‘Thank you. I chose it myself.’

‘My dad says I’m gonna be weird-looking when I grow up. He said that to my mom, before she left.’

Maybe it was the hint of Jimmy Novak left in him, channeling and stirring fatherly instincts from his comfortable seat in heaven. He smiled softly. ‘I have a daughter. She’s very pretty. You look a little bit like her, so I imagine you’re going to grow up pretty too.’

The little girl turned fully towards him, clambering up onto the counter and sitting next to his head. ‘I don’t know if I want to be just pretty.’

‘What would you like to be?’

She swung her legs up a few times, ruffled calf-length skirt rippling to flash layers of lace and netting. ‘I wanna make clothes. I wanna be able to make my own clothes to wear. And take care of animals. And go to space.’

‘You have a lot of dreams to follow. You should follow as many as you can.’

She flashed Cas a grin. ‘Thanks, mister. You should follow yours too.’

The machine beeped, signalling his clothes were clean. He threw them into one of the few functional dryers and sighed. ‘I hope one day I’ll be able to. But some dreams can't always be fulfilled.’

When his clothes were finally clean and dry, and he’d said goodbye to his new friend, Cas headed off to find where he’d left his car. He’d had to swap to a different vehicle relatively recently; the old one had taken severe damage—from his own launched torso—when he’d been thrown against the windshield during a particularly fierce fight with a werewolf. The new one was a beat-up blue Ford Focus, with dodgy power-steering and one of the taillights only intermittently functioning, and he battled with both all the way to his destination. Something Dean had said the night before, and the little girl at the launderette had given him something to think about, and he just had to know.

 

Dean was struggling to concentrate.

It was the constant feeling of being watched that did it. Every so often, he would catch Sam looking over at him questioningly, as if he was trying to figure out something, calculate something, remember something obscure. Even when he wasn’t looking, he could feel the gaze on him, distracting him from looking up something Jody had sent their way that might have been a case of two demons looking for a divorce getting into a fight in the middle of a law office. ‘Not a typical demon. Michaelis?’

‘Yeah. Reference to the demonologist. I tried to get a hold of Cas but he wasn’t answering his phone.’

That had to be a test to see if he would react. ‘I’m sure Cas is fine. What about the other one?’

‘Uh, sounds like some edgy teenager’s fantasy surname…Phantomhive. From what I can see, the two were master and servant for years. Then something went wrong, and now they’re demons looking for a contract to be broken.’ Sam shrugged. ‘I mean, we could head up and see if there’s anything we can do to help the lawyers keep them in line?’

Dean’s phone buzzed. ‘Uhh…okay, no need for us to head all the way across the country. Jody says that the contract has been legally broken…and now the demons want to run off and get married instead.’

Sam’s eyebrows rose ever higher. ‘…Are they causing trouble?’

‘They’re planning to head to Japan and run a cat cafe together, so I’m guessing not. And that’s about the only thing I can find that we can currently handle. Claire checked in, said there’s a few werewolves in California she’s dealing with. Jody and Donna are in New York talking to Mr and Mr Cat-Cafe demons…we really are off the clock.’

‘How about we try and get a hold of Cas and—‘

‘Sam, stop.’

Sam sighed, exasperated. ‘Come on, is there really no chance you like him even a little bit?’

‘I like the angel. It doesn’t mean I want to jump his bones.’

‘What if he’d picked a woman as his vessel?’

He shifted in his seat, leaning his head back and groaning to the ceiling. ‘I don’t know, but I’m getting sick of these questions. I’m straight. Maybe if Cas had chosen a female vessel things would feel different.’

‘So you admit that you’re at least mentally attracted to him?’

‘You sounded like the lawyer you never became.’

Sam rolled his eyes, standing. ‘Fine, I’ll let it go for now. But please think about it. Attraction is more than just physical.’

‘It doesn’t suddenly mean I’m looking for dick now.’

When Sam had disappeared off into his room—probably still recovering from the hangover—Dean sat back, closing all his browser pages before opening a new one up and signing into his Netflix account. Just as he was about to commit to a few hours of bingeing Orange Is The New Black, something moved in the corner of his eye and he whipped around, gun pulled from the under-table holster and pointing at the person before him.

The woman before him was incredibly pretty; hair reaching down her back in tousled black curls, slim waist but with appealing curves both above and below. She was short, but still managed to reach a few inches taller than Rowena in a pair of heels. Even so, that gave no explanation to how—and why—she had wormed her way into the Men of Letters bunker uninvited and unannounced—

‘Hello Dean.’

He almost dropped his gun. The voice was higher, delicate even, but he knew that deadpan inflection anywhere. ‘…Cas?’


	5. A Shambolic Bar-Room Brawl (With Vampires)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pretty much lost all will to carry on posting. Anxiety is at an all time high.

‘My vessel was injured. I traded with another angel for the time being.’

In his mind, Cas reasoned that it wasn’t technically a lie. Jimmy’s body had sustained a few small injuries in the fight earlier. That being said, they were all superficial, would heal quickly without much intervention. The vessel he’d borrowed had belonged to a lesser-known, infrequently-summoned angel, one who spent most of her time in her human form enjoying the joys of video games and riding a motorcycle too fast to be safe up and down the highways of the state. Even so, he knew she’d take care of Jimmy’s body for him.

It was whether he could keep hers in good condition that was the worrying part.

He stepped closer to Dean, bypassing him to move towards the laptop. ‘There’s a few vampires heading into town.’

‘Where the hell were you? Sam’s been trying to call.’

‘Trading vessels is slightly harder than simply taking over a willing vessel. It was almost an hour before I could leave with this body. Are you going to help me with the vampires or not?’

Dean looked at him, eyes travelling up and down his body but not meeting his eyes. He nodded, walking away. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

Ten minutes later, Dean stopped the car outside a bar, and both of them stared at it. It truly was the dingiest of places; dulling and half-dead lights blinking behind the sign above the door, lead-based paint peeling away from the wooden frame, and even the stray cat sitting on the doorstep looked as if it had seen better days as it licked grumpily at its matted fur and hissed before they’d even fully made it out of the car.

Cas rounded the Impala, letting Dean pop the trunk and hand him a suitable blade before selecting one for himself.

Dean cleared his throat, finally looking him in the eye. ‘Cas, of all the vessels you could have—‘

‘Now isn’t the time to discuss my vessel.’ And before Dean could ask anything else, Cas walked up to the door, ignoring the cat’s displeasure at his presence, and swiftly kicked it open.

To say that the vampires weren’t expecting them was a massive understatement. By the time the rest of them had reacted to the front door coming off its hinges, he’d already beheaded one and had another one on the floor. The new vessel might have been more delicate than the old one, more slight where Jimmy had been marginally more muscular, but it was no different to inhabiting any other he’d had before. As he cut off the head of the one below him, Dean tangled with another, smashing glasses as he threw one across the table to slice right through the column of its neck.

The entire process of dispatching with the vampires couldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes, but by the time they were done, the bar looked as if a bomb had gone off; fragments of what had once been bottles and glasses littered the floor, liquor and ale mingling with blood, and only two tables had survived the ordeal, the rest having been reduced to little more than kindling along with two of the bar stools.

Dean breathed heavily, wiping a bloodied nose with the back of his hand. ‘You said there were only a couple of them?’

‘I said a few. A few could mean more than two—‘ His sentence was suddenly cut off, lurching back with a low ‘oof’ as he was thrown into the wall to his side. Before he could even think, even breathe in, the late-shower to the vampire party lunged, going straight for his throat with rows of sharp teeth. He struggled against the grip, shoving his hand forward into the vamp’s face and digging his longer-than-usual nails into its eyes, but the vampire broke away and blindly kept going for him.

Dean grabbed the vampire, ripping him away and beheading him with one swift strike. The head disappeared under one of the chairs that had survived the initial fight, its teeth still bared and snapping one last time before stilling.

When Dean spoke, it came out breathless. ‘Man that better be the last one. You okay?’

‘Scraped my cheek. Otherwise fine.’

‘We’ll get that cleaned up when we get back to the bunker.’ Dean scoped the room, checking for any stragglers or hiders, then sighed and gestured to the broken door. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

 

The injuries were superficial, barely anything. Even so, Dean cleaned up Cas’ wounds himself, scraping away some of the dirt and glass that had dug into the wound on his cheek and the side of one hand.

As he took out the last shard of glass, Cas healed all of his wounds over, upper body swaying in his seat and face paler than before. Dean frowned, putting a hand on his forearm. ‘You okay?’

‘A little dizzy. I’ve used a lot of grace in the last few days, trying to heal two different bodies…I think I need to lie dow—down…’ Cas tried to stand, but almost immediately stumbled forward, falling limp and collapsing against his chest.

A tiny part of Dean wondered if he’d faked it, but when he feigned losing his grip and Cas almost slid straight out of his arms to the floor, he scrabbled to catch him again and lifted him up with a sigh before carrying him through to the spare bedroom of the bunker.

The room had unofficially come to belong to Cas over time, almost clinical in its bareness save for a few pieces of furniture. Even so, there were a few tiny touches that had made their way in there that gave it the feel of being something more than just a spare room, like the picture of Claire as a kid with Jimmy and Amelia next to the bed, and another candid one of himself, Sam, and Cas that Rowena had caught in the middle of them digging into a cheese and pepperoni stuffed-crust pizza that Dean himself had made in a moment of god-like domesticity. Nearer to the door, a sporadically-used laptop—one of Sam’s hand-downs that still worked—sat open on the antique desk, and a small potted plant that somehow thrived even without the sunlight (he assumed angelic grace had something to do with it) was neatly aligned next to it on top of a copy of a book that Claire had gifted to him. It was minimal, but it had definitely become Cas’ room.

He placed the angel down on the bed, rearranging his new form so he wouldn’t wake up with a sore neck, and took in the opportunity to admire the choice in vessel again. He’d of course known that Cas could inhabit another vessel, but his choice couldn’t have been worse for Dean. He’d had plenty of crushes on a plethora of different women, of varying ethnicity, skin colour, hair colour and cut, fashion sense, but if there was one that always had his attention, it was a woman with dark hair and curves in pleasing places. The rest was incidental. He bit his tongue, remembering who he was actually looking at. If Cas had chosen this woman as his vessel the first time he came to Earth, he would have been trying to get in his pants almost instantly, and from what Cas had implied the night before, likely succeeded.

He had no reason to stay there. Even so, Dean lingered in the chair at the desk for a moment, his mind forming an image of its own accord of being in bed with the vessel before him, of watching it reach the peak of euphoria, come down from the high, and then do it all over again. And then suddenly the new vessel was gone, and his mind threw him a curveball—the concept of doing the same with Cas in his regular vessel. His stomach knotted up; he could see Cas bare, pressed up against him, kissing him, touching him, gasping against his mouth.

Dean shook himself out of the thought, swallowing thickly and trying to ignore the pound of his own pulse in his head. Stupid idiot brother putting stupid thoughts in his head.He left the room as quickly as he could to retreat into his own. He needed some straight porn ASAP, no bullshit, and preferably not including a pretty brunette.


	6. Comfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck it. I'm posting it.

He wasn’t in the same place that last remembered being.

When Cas awoke in his room, blinking up to the grubby ceiling that hadn’t been re-painted in several decades, he felt slightly more alert. Still a little low on grace, but better than he had before. He scrabbled in his pocket for his phone, the time showing that it was nearly nine-PM. For an angel who didn’t need to sleep, he had slept for a long time.

Shifting off the bed, he used a little grace to make sure his body and his clothes were clean, then trailed out of the room into the library, where Sam was sat in front of his laptop, feet up on the table and sipping at a can of soda while something with a lot of canned laughter played in the background.

Evidently Dean had told him what had gone on, because when Cas walked up, Sam didn’t even flinch. ‘Hello Sam.’

‘Hey. You want a soda?’

‘No, thank you. You don’t seem surprised to see me like this.’

‘Dean told me. Did you really switch vessels because you were injured?’

He looked down. ‘My vessel was injured. Not as badly as I said it was, however.’

Sam’s gaze flicked from the screen to him before he closed the laptop and turned fully. ‘For what it’s worth? I don’t think testing him with a different vessel was the best idea…but I also think that my brother is in denial that he might be able to have feelings for someone other than a woman.’

‘What makes you say that?’

Sam chuckled humourlessly, sipping his soda. ‘I think our dad made the mistake of equating strength with masculinity and heterosexuality, and in turn, Dean overcompensated for whatever curiosities and, quote-unquote, feminine side he might have had. Pushed them all down and refused to let himself explore them like I did because he thought dad would reject him.’

Cas nodded, tilting his head. ‘I don’t want to push him. I don’t think that he feels anything for me other than friendship anyway. But I needed to know whether things might have been different in a female vessel.’ He looked down. ‘Unfortunately, I think I was right…if I’d picked differently, there may have been a chance he would have seen me as…more, somehow.’

Sam shifted over, placing a hand comfortingly on his forearm. ‘Well, he’s an idiot if he lets this get in the way of what you could have.’

Maybe it was because Sam was the closest thing to Dean, or it could have just out of a need for closeness to someone, anyone, but Cas lifted his head, moving forward to hover in front of Sam. ‘Would you…’

Sam gave him a half-smile, shaking his head. ‘Cas, as attractive as you are in this vessel or your regular vessel…I’m just not mentally attracted to you in that way. Otherwise I would have been hitting on you already.’

‘I know that. I feel nothing for you romantically either. But would you do it anyway?’

Instead of answering, Sam lifted his chin up with one hand, stroking his vessel’s long hair away from his cheek and pressing their mouths together. There was no rising feeling, no blazing emotional connection behind it or a spark of something that could be. There was only a strange comfort in the touch of lips to lips that made his heart beat a little slower, an affirmation that it wasn’t him that was the issue.

When the brief kiss broke, and his eyes fluttered open again, Dean was stood staring at them from the bedroom hallway.

 

No matter what he did, he just couldn’t seem to get himself off without it happening.

Dean had been trying for over an hour when he finally gave in. He’d tried watching something with two pretty lesbians in it, a couple of straight stuff where the woman had almost comically large breasts, and even a bi threesome where a girl and a guy spent the entire time making another girl go crazy with pleasure. The issue wasn’t the content; everything he’d been watching had been incredibly pleasing to watch. It was just that every time he’d gotten close to orgasm, his brain had flicked to Castiel. Cas in the form of the pretty girl vessel, doing things to him just like the girls in the videos. And then Cas in his regular vessel…making him feel the same things. And it wasn’t that he was completely repulsed.

Every time he’d gotten close, and Castiel in either form popped into his head, he’d almost lost it in an instant.

Stupid Sam pushing stupid questions into his head.

He groaned and shoved his laptop aside, using his clean hand to rake through his hair and scrub across his face. The other hand slipped out of his jeans, still partly stiff under the thick fabric. Looked like he wasn’t getting anything from anyone including his own hand tonight.

When his erection had finally subsided, and he’d taken a particularly chilly shower, Dean redressed himself in a comfortable pair of plaid sweats and a t-shirt, and wandered down the hallway to see if there was any pie left for a pre-bed snack.

He didn’t get as far as the kitchen. He rounded the corner to the library area, and walked straight into Sam and Cas sat at one of the tables, in the middle of a kiss.

Dean couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this kind of numbness. It wasn’t the coldness of winter, or the sting of something slapping his skin and fading away into nothing. It was like a sucker-punch, and then a wrenching feeling…and then nothing. A black hole pit of his stomach. Emptiness.

All thought of food was gone.

Sam looked up to him, mouth opening and closing a few times but nothing coming out. Cas stood up, making to walk over, but Dean held up a hand. ‘Glad you’ve found someone.’

‘Dean—‘

‘My baby brother is a catch. Don’t you dare hurt him.’

Sam shook his head. ‘Dean, it’s not—‘

‘I hope you’ll be really happy together.’ He hovered in the arch, unsure of where to turn. His fingers twitched of their own accord, unsure if they wanted to clench or relax. In the end, he turned away from them, shuffling back down to his room and closing the door behind him with a quiet click.

Even as the click’s echo rebounded, ebbed away, he ignored the single tear that had slipped from his right eye.


	7. A Mistake, Escape

Sleep was fitful, full of dreams and nightmares as usual. Some were the usual, of Sam trying to die for him and succeeding again and again, but there were new ones in the mix now; Cas and Sam, and kissing, and touching, dying for each other and leaving him alone in the world all over again. He started, jolting out of one dream with a yelp and sitting shivering and clawing at his own arms as the images remained.

For the rest of the night, he wandered around aimlessly, completing all of the things he’d been perpetually putting off. He did laundry, dishes, prepped healthier meals. He vacuumed out the Impala, hosed her down, polished her up. He put away the books in the library, and cleaned every inch of every room besides Sam’s and Cas’—he didn’t know if he was ready to hear whatever was developing between them—scrubbing every surface spotless and every centimetre of the floor until it gleamed. Even when there was nothing left to do, he kept finding little things, mindless things, occupying himself with rearranging the chairs, the tables, every ornament and artefact shifted to be in a both aesthetically-pleasing place and somewhere easy to reach and examine.

He kept going. He didn’t want to sleep and to dream. He didn’t want to think about the thing he’d never wanted suddenly being something he couldn’t have. That was the confusing part; he’d never wanted Cas before. He’d never wanted him in Jimmy’s vessel. He’d never even entertained the notion that Cas could be in his scope of interest. He was straight. But now Cas had a female body, and he’d become an option, an option that had very quickly been stripped from the table and smashing all of the best china dishes with it when he’d walked in on him with his lips pressed to Sam’s.

As if knowing he was on his mind, Dean turned and suddenly came face-to-face with Cas, standing there before him as he wiped down the kitchen countertop he’d cleaned twice already.

He turned back, continuing to scrub. ‘How you doing?’

It came out colder than intended. Cas sighed. ‘I’m not interested in Sam.’

‘You looked pretty interested when you were sucking face yesterday.’

‘I wanted comfort, Dean. I asked Sam for that kiss. I felt like I was alone.’

‘You’re never alone, Cas. You always have us.’

‘Not that kind of alone.’ A hand touched his forearm. Dean paused, turned to face Cas fully. ‘I bared emotions to you, and I was rejected by you. I felt lonely.’

Dean huffed out a humourless chuckle, throwing the cloth down on the counter behind him and putting his hands on Cas’ waist. Unsure of what do, what to say, or whether he should even say anything at all, Dean leaned down and kissed Cas fully, wrapping his arm’s around his slim waist and pressing the curves of the new vessel’s hips against his own in the process. New balm-soft lips, silky skin, gently rounded curves, and the curls of long hair tickling his fingertips, titillated him, turned him on all over again. Dean put every move he knew into the kiss, turning them around to lift Cas up onto the clean countertop.

And then hands pushed at him, shoved him away. He stepped back, watching as Cas suddenly broke down in front of his eyes, crying silently behind the veil of his new vessel’s hair.

His voice was watery, shaky, on the verge of cracking. ‘Jimmy Novak is my vessel, Dean. I’m not going to have this vessel forever. Tomorrow, I’m getting Jimmy’s body back.’ He blinked up, gaze bleary and reddened. ‘If you wouldn’t want to be with me in my regular vessel…I can’t let you be with me in this one. I’m sorry.’

Before he even had the time to blink, to think, to say a single word, Cas was already gone.

 

Being back in his old vessel felt like going home, and ambivalently foreign.

He blinked back at the reflection of Jimmy, flashes of the kiss with Dean coming back to him. This was his favourite vessel, the one that had been the only one he’d felt truly attached to. And yet it was the one in which he would never be able to have Dean, to know what it would feel like to be appreciated by him, maybe even one day loved by him.

When he’d chosen his vessel, he’d chosen the wrong one. But the wrong choice had been the right one for himself. And he wouldn’t change that, not even for Dean.

He forced all thoughts of Dean out of his mind, set about to work. Over the course of three days, he travelled far and wide, took down more vampires and werewolves and even a Japanese Kappa that had found its way to the States after being washed down a river into the ocean. Sam messaged him a few times, asking what he’d said to Dean, telling him that Dean had been almost silent and aggressive when he had said anything at all. The concept gave him no pleasure, only drove him further away from the Men of Letters bunker to the southern borders, back up again to the north to help a ghost find peace. He went every direction, dealing with as much as he could just to avoid going back.

Right then, anything was better than going back to face Dean.


	8. Denial Undenied

The iron candlestick cut through the spirit like a hot knife, buying them a few moments to prepare. Sam had the remains in his hands; a few chunks of leftover bones, and a tiny charm in the shape of a unicorn. The kid had been abused, died alone in her room from her injuries and angry at the cards the world had dealt her. It hadn’t been her fault at all.

He poured the salt and lighter fluid over the items, firing up what remained of a book of matches and dropping it into the mix. The high-pitched shriek was deafening, sickening, and then it was gone, leaving a ringing in his ears in its wake.

Sam turned to look at Dean, but his brother was already gone, heading back to the car and slamming the door behind him. It had been nine days since the kissing incident in the bunker, and as much as Sam wasn’t handling the situation well himself, his brother wasn’t handling it at all. When he’d awoken that morning, he’d gone into the kitchen for breakfast as usual, and been shocked to see Dean already awake and staring into a cup of coffee like it held the answers to every question in the universe and was refusing to give them to him. And that was when Dean had told him about him kissing Cas. If he was being totally honest, he wasn’t surprised; when he’d said Cas’ name, his voice had been strained, on the verge of breaking.

Sam sighed, chucking the old candlestick to the side and following his brother’s lead. When he was safely back in the car, and they were headed back to the bunker with some mindless metal track filling the otherwise silent vehicle, he let his head rest against the car window and finally asked. ‘Are you angry because you thought you could have Cas only when he was in a female vessel, or because you’re trying to work through something else?’

‘Let it go, Sam.’ Monotone. He was holding back.

‘What did it feel like when you saw me kiss him?’

‘Sam.’

‘Were you angry? Upset? Both?’

‘I swear to God, Sam—‘

‘For Christ’ sake, Dean, why won’t you just talk about this with me?’

‘BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHO I AM ANYMORE!’

Sam sat back up, staring at Dean’s profile as he focused a little too hard on the road. ‘Dean. Come on. We’re brothers. Talk to me, man.’

It was like a dam breaking. Dean swerved, screeching to a halt on the side of the road in a small clearing in the trees, then slammed himself forward onto the steering wheel, clenching the outer ring with a vice-grip. His voice shook. ‘I keep having dreams about Cas.’

Sam said nothing, listening.

‘I thought it was you, putting ideas in my head. I keep dreaming of Cas as himself, in his normal vessel, and kissing him, and I feel—‘ he let go of the steering wheel sitting back and gesturing with his now-free hands, ‘—repulsed.’

‘By what?’

‘By the fact I don’t feel repulsed about the concept of kissing him even in his normal vessel. I didn’t think…I keep going over memories in my head of feeling weird around guys, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like I’m not who I thought I was.’ The reply came through gritted teeth, the tears coming down hard and pouring in rivers down his cheeks and jaw and neck. Dean swiped at them with his fingers, sniffing and pursing his lips.

Sucking in a breath, Sam slowly exhaled. ‘Who is the first one you remember?’

‘…..A guy in my class back in Illinois, when we were still kids. Adrien Velasquez. Minority kid, kept getting called “beaner” by some douchebag skinhead neo-Nazi in the making; blue eyes, blond hair, the full Hitler Youth shebang. We were close while we were there, but I always figured that the feeling had to be admiration, for dealing with everything so damn peacefully where I would have just beat the crap out of the guy.’

Sam nodded. ‘Dad didn’t exactly make it easy for you to discuss the confusing stuff. I just kind of had to figure it out on my own, talk it through with people I could trust.’

‘You couldn’t trust me.’

‘Because you seemed to turn out so much like dad.’

‘…What do you think he’d say if he was alive?’

He sighed slowly. ‘In all honesty? I think he’d accept it with me, and come down on you like an anvil. He always knew I wasn’t like him. But you were like a slightly altered reflection of him. You were John Winchester two-point-zero, already in the family business and ready to be better than him one day.’ Sam shifted closer, turning to hold his arms open, and thankfully Dean took the invitation without reservation. They stayed in that hug for a long time, just like when they were scared as kids, only this time, Sam was the one with his chin resting on the crown of Dean’s head, hand stroking comfortingly through the soft brush of hair on the back of his neck and rubbing a hand across the same few protruding vertebrae through his jacket. When Dean pulled away, he cleared his throat, and started driving again without another word, only this time with a looser grip on the wheel. It wasn’t all okay yet—Cas was still avoiding Dean, and they had no idea where the hell he was—but acknowledgement was a start.


	9. Our Hearts Are Hurting

_‘Cas, it’s Sam. Look, I know that Dean is the last person you want to see right now, but…we want to know you’re okay, and we’d really appreciate if you’d come and see us. Think about it, please.’_

The message was the fourth of seven. The first had been a simple ‘Hey, it’s Sam, call us when you get the chance’ and progressed all the way through to a short speech about how much they missed him. But he didn’t want to go back to the bunker yet. Not yet.

Almost two weeks had passed. Two weeks since Dean had lifted him up to sit on that counter, to stand between his thighs and kiss him with vigour and commanding strength.

Almost two weeks since he’d pushed him away.

Cas turned to the phone in his hand skimming through the messages. Jody updating him on a few hunting things. Claire sending a picture of a rare day off from hunting, sat in an animal shelter surrounded by rescue puppies and kittens with the caption of ‘Wish you were here, Cas!’ emblazoned at the bottom (that one he’d have to get printed later). Donna giving him a list of all the places she knew did good coffee and cake, along with a photo of herself giving the thumbs up outside of one of them with a slice of Sachertorte that put all others to shame. A smile curled at his lips. Maybe he could go spend some time with one of them, take his mind off of Dean.

His phone rang again. Sam, again. He let it go to voicemail.

‘Please call me. I miss you, but Dean really misses you.’

So much for that. Cas hit Sam’s name, and he answered after one ring. ‘You okay man?’

‘Hey Sam—‘

‘Please come back to the bunker. Dean really isn’t himself with you gone. You said he was lost without me, but he’s lost without you too.’

‘I can’t. Not yet. I can’t be around him yet.’

‘Cas, just…think about it. Please.’ Then the line went dead.

Cas let the phone drop onto the passenger seat, clattering against a couple of things that he hadn’t put away yet. He was about to turn back to start the car, about to head even further away from the bunker than he already was, when he caught sight of it. The tape had fallen out of the glove compartment when he’d been looking for one of his fake IDs, clattered to the patch of carpet below and had been sat there for over a week. He hadn’t listened to it yet. Dean had made it all that time ago, and he’d never listened to it, not because he didn’t like Dean’s music, but just out of never having the time to really enjoy it. He leaned over and picked it up, turning it over in his hands a few times before slotting it into the player.

There was AC/DC, Motorhead, Metallica. Several tracks by Boston and Kansas. Nothing that had been written and recorded within the last twenty years. It was all Dean, almost. Just when he thought the tape would finish, it came on. One song younger, newer, a touch more country than rock, with a female vocalist in the back. Whose influence had been put into his tastes here, he didn’t know. Maybe Dean had tried something new, or maybe he’d heard it and thought he’d like the song.

_‘Life keeps us runnin’, chasin’ and fallin’, but we won’t let go…when the world keeps on turnin’, our hearts are hurtin’, but we won’t let go…’_ The tape had come long before he’d said anything to Dean, and yet the song seemed to speak to him as if the two were intrinsically connected, a premonition and a flashback all at once, like the lyrics had been waiting to speak to him until that very moment. Life had kept Dean and Sam on the run, constantly moving, never settling, and yet letting go was something they couldn’t do; they had risen from the dead enough times for that to be clear. Now they had dragged him into it, unable, unwilling, to let him go too.

He didn’t really want to let go either. Something screamed to him, shrieked shrilly to hold onto hope, and letting the tape continue to play on, Cas pushed the key into the ignition and turned the car around.


	10. Breaking Point

It was just him when the distant sound of a door opening pulled his attention away from his (very Irish) coffee.

They’d been running low on almost everything except beer and whisky—they were two brothers stuck in a bunker for sixty-percent of their days, what else was there to do besides drink and work on cases?—so Sam had gone on a food run to stock up on the essentials. Usually Dean would elect to do it himself because Sam had a habit of never buying anything that looked even remotely delicious, but he was too distracted, and had simply thrown a roughly-scribbled list of things for him to pick up for him. Guaranteed, the box chocolate cake mix and the gummy bears wouldn’t even make it into the basket with Sam doing the shopping, but hopefully the blackberry and apple pie would edge its way in there somehow…it had fruit in it. Maybe the sugar and flaky all-butter crust would help him drown his sorrows somehow.

The dreams had been coming for nearly a fortnight. If it wasn’t a dream about Cas leaving the bunker that night, it was the fantasies he hadn’t known he’d had; of him and Cas in bed together, bodies entwined and breath coming hard and heavy, or of them finishing what he had started in the kitchen that night, Dean hoisting him up onto the counter and taking him right there and then. After the third day of dreams, Dean had finally given in, retreated to his room early one evening and skimming through porn online. It had taken a few attempts, a few tries to steel himself as his fingers shook against the keys, but finally he’d typed in the words and brought up a video that looked somewhat non-threatening. After establishing that he was in fact questioning his sexuality, that he wasn’t sure what he was, it wasn’t necessarily easy, but it was easier, somehow less scary to sit back and let the scenes play out; two men kissing, reaching into each other’s clothing, sinking down onto their knees to take the other one into their mouths. When it became clear that the video was definitely having an effect, that his body was reacting pleasantly to what was happening as it had to so many videos of women, he let it happen. Dean stroked through each moment as one man let himself open up for the other, hips rising up into a thrust with a gasp as he watched the other man penetrate his partner, and when the man on the bottom came, smiling and laughing and shaking through orgasm, Dean’s own overtook him in an instant.

Once he’d done it once, it was easy to do it again. The next night he didn’t even look at videos, simply fantasising about the sensations under the hot shower stream. He even tried seeing if he could stimulate himself from the inside. The angle of his fingers had been awkward, not working fully for him, but he’d managed to get one stroke a little higher than the rest, bearing into a sensitive spot and sending a pleasant jolt through his entire body. When he finished that time, it was with a soft moan, Cas’ name passing his lips by accident.

Now, it made no sense to deny it. He was bisexual. He was attracted to women, and to men.

And regardless of vessel, he was undeniably, irrevocably attracted to Castiel.

He dropped the mug he’d previously been drinking coffee from into the sink. The phantom sensation of Cas’ lips under his own still numbed him from time to time, the memory arising from nowhere and without provocation, and the concept he thought that the attraction was skin-deep—vessel-deep—suddenly foreign and unwelcome.

The door sounded in the distance. Maybe the grocery store wasn’t too busy. ‘Did they have blackberry pie?’

No answer. Maybe Sam hadn’t heard him. He trailed through into the library. ‘Sam? Did they have pie?’

‘Hello, Dean.’

His was almost sure his heart skipped a beat. Dean turned slowly, eyes flicking to the top of the staircase and watching every step he took down to his level.

When Cas touched down onto the floor, his voice finally decided to make a belated appearance. ‘Cas?’

His smile was small, sad, timid. ‘Sam’s been calling me a lot.’

‘Yeah…’ The first time seeing Cas back in his regular vessel, and he couldn’t seem to get out more than one-word sentences. Clearing his throat, swallowing, he tried again. ‘How have you been the past few weeks?’

‘Busy. I did a lot of hunting by myself.’

‘Are you okay?’ His eyes flicked over the long coat sleeves, searching for blood, damage. Nothing. ‘You should have called us.’

‘It wasn’t an easy decision. Coming back.’ Cas looked down. ‘I didn’t know if I could be around you.’

‘Cas—‘

‘This is my vessel, Dean. This is the one I chose. This is the one I come back to. It’s a part of me now, and you don’t feel anything for that part of me. Until those feelings went away, I didn’t think I could be in the same room as you.’

_Until those feelings went away_ … Dean’s heart sank like a stone. There were so many things he wanted to say, and if Cas didn’t feel that way anymore, maybe it didn’t matter. But he was ready to get down on his knees and beg him not to go, not to leave until he’d heard him out. Walking up to him, Dean stood before him and rested a hand on each of his shoulders.

The words never came out. Instead of words, he surged forward and pressed his mouth to Cas’. The openness, the raw feeling of putting himself out there with the clear chance of rejection was new and terrifying, and the lack of push-back against his advance brought a wave of unfamiliar vulnerability; maybe Castiel truly had changed his mind in the time that it had taken for him to get over himself.

But then _pressure_. Pressure as the angel kissed him back, hands touching to his chest and sliding up around his shoulders to pull him down closer. He didn’t know how long it went on for, didn’t care, just kept wondering how long he and Cas could have really been doing this if he hadn’t been such a brick wall or a closed door to whatever had always been under the surface. He screamed on the inside that they could have had this for years if he hadn’t have kept telling himself that he didn’t swing that way. Cas broke the kiss, a breath shuddering out between his lips. ‘Dean.’

He couldn’t say anything. Dean’s brain fogged over, all thoughts blanked out and replaced with nothing but the angel in front of him and his mouth and the light muscle and soft flesh that had for so long been hidden underneath a white shirt and beige trench coat. He was touching an angel, a living, breathing angel, and he had a heartbeat that was pounding underneath his ribs because of him. The enormity was overwhelming.

There would be no coming back from it, and Dean could honestly say he didn’t give a fuck. Fuck the labels. Fuck the mental restrictions his mind had put on him for so long. He had Cas, and he wasn’t going to let the beautiful son of a bitch go now. He stepped them backwards, guiding Cas back until his legs bumped the table. He lowered him down onto the surface gently, hand trailing down from Cas’ collarbone to his clothed navel, before hoisting himself up to join him.

If there was one thing he was grateful for, it was that there was no interruptions. He wished that he’d been a little more patient, that he’d taken the chance to bring Cas back to his room, for the memory foam of his mattress to take in the indents of both of their bodies. But even with his back pressed to a hard wooden surface, Dean fully encased within him and thrusting as deep as he could get, Cas responded so beautifully, enthusiastically, leaning up on one arm to reach and kiss him and gasp his name against his mouth. Every wanton nasal grunt only spurred him on, drove him crazy with need and desire, and it felt like the sweetest victory when Cas’ head tilted back and he howled to the high ceilings above as he reached his end.

When they'd come down from the high, wandered over to his bedroom to slip dirtied bodies under his clean sheets together, Dean couldn't stop himself from touching Cas. His arms looped around his waist, chest held flush with Cas' back like he might literally fly away, wanting to feel him there in his embrace to make sure he actually was there and what had happened really had happened. The patches of his back where wings showed through when lightning struck were feather-soft, silken and unscarred, and when he pressed a kiss to one of them, nosed against it, Cas shuddered pleasantly. 'I'm sorry. For what I said when you told me.'

'It's alright.'

'No, it's really not. You were the exact same person on the inside when I turned you down the first time, and I still didn't see it.' He breathed deep, holding him tighter.

'Dean—'

‘Please don’t leave me.'

In his arms, Cas turned, pushing his forehead into his shoulder like a cat. 'Every time I’ve died, I somehow come back, one way or another. The only real constants are you, and Sam, and being a hunter.' He kissed his throat. ‘You’re my home. As long as it is my choice, I couldn't ever leave you. Not really.’

And the kisses kept coming.


	11. Epilogue

Sam knew that something was off the second he stepped into the bunker library.

If Dean was in—and he knew that he was because the Impala had still been securely in the garage when he'd got home—he was usually audible from there, in the kitchen warbling to some rock song on the ageing iPod he had reluctantly stolen from Sam when one of their dad’s old Metallica tapes had finally given up the ghost, mumbling to himself about foods he wanted as he did research on whatever case they were in the middle of, shoes thudding as he wandered through the rooms looking for something.

A tap dripped in the distance. The ventilation hummed and clicked.

And then a soft chuckle. Lips smacking against lips.

Sam followed the sound, down the corridor leading to the bedrooms until he was stood outside of Dean's bedroom door, staring through it with wide eyes as he caught sight of what was happening inside.

He'd seen his brother make out with girls before, saying goodbye to a teenage crush that had been something just a little more, or a girl who might have been 'the one' in another life before they drove away to deal with the next case. It wasn't that different to see Dean kiss a man. It was simply confusing when, considering how much he’d freaked out about Cas having a crush on him in the first place, that it was Cas’ lips that his brother’s own were locked with. Stood together at the end of the bed, the angel’s hands were holding a towel and rubbing it against Dean's still-damp hair, while Dean’s dabbed at a bare shoulder with another.

His shocked expression morphed into a smile, and Sam cleared his throat. 'So, uh, you two made out—I mean up.'

Dean's tongue poked at the inside of his own cheek, chewing his lip before turning to face him. 'How long have you been waiting to use that for anything ever?'

'Not too long. Happy accident.' He grinned, nodding at Cas. 'Mind if I borrow him for a second?'

Leaving Cas to put his shirt back on, Sam led Dean to the kitchen, immediately cracking open a beer for each of them. ‘Congratulations, Dean. You’re a one on the Kinsey Scale.’

Dean sipped, nodding. 'Yeah, well...you were right. I've been repressing stuff and ignoring things, and…'

'You've had your head up your own ass?'

'Don't push it. But yes.'

'Dad probably didn't help with that with all the manly overcompensating.'

'No, he did not. Still, you're wrong about one thing.'

'About what?'

Dean wandered towards the door, stopping under the frame. 'It's more like a two to three.'

Sam frowned. 'Wait...who—'

'Wouldn't say no to a young Tom Selleck. Idris is up there too. Also not gonna lie, Tom Hiddleston has a weird vibe I’m into.’

He shook his head, laughing against the lip of the bottle. 'Looking for a Daddy, Dean?'

'I am the Daddy, Sam.’

‘You keep telling yourself that.’

‘Bitch.’

‘Jerk.’


End file.
